Steps for Crashing Modeler and OSX 10.2.6!!

[policarpo]

Here are the reproducible effects and the steps to crash your modeler under 10.2.6

Feel free to see if you can reproduce this. Warning, don't have anything important open, because you will be forced to reboot.

Listed below are all out of box tools that ship with LightWave.

1. Open Modeler
2. Set your viewport view to single view and select TOP as your viewport mode and set it to Shaded Wireframe mode
3. Select Disc from the Create Objects tab
4. Draw out a flat disc in the top view (the default number of segments will be fine)
5. Select the center of the disc
6. Bevel the center towards the inside while maintaining the flat plane (we are building a fan type object)
7. Select two vertices on the outer ring
8. Select Extend and move the new geometry out
9. Select two more vertices (leaving a gap from the first extension you created (we are modeling a fan type object).
10. Continue in this manner and use your keyboard shortcuts to pan and zoom around.

At some point during the process of making your fan, Modeler will crash and OSX will freeze.

I'll try and put together a visual scenario on the PC to visually show the steps that have successfully forced a hard reboot under 10.2.6 every time i've tried it.

I am running the following setup:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1Ghz 15" PowerBook with ATI 9000 Radeon with the 8500 drivers as indicated during boot up in the StartUp logs
768MB Ram
Dual Display (with second monitor set as primary monitor running @ 1920x1200 via DVI to VGA adapter)
OSX 10.2.6 with all current OS updates
LightWave 7.5c with dongle attached to Apple Keyboard
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'd like confirmation from others with a similar setup out there.

Thanks in advance. :thumbsup:

note: i've emailed this info to ATI, and NewTek and stressed the problem to Apple a few weeks back.

I am going to wipe my drive in the next week and see if the problem persists, and if it does I will be calling Apple to have a heart to heart. :)

[eblu]

sounds like an openGL memory bug.
a graphics driver issue, are you running an ATI graphics card?

[policarpo]

yep.

this is part of the ATI discussion, but the page got a little heavy, so I wanted to start a new thread specific to reproducing the crash.

I'll update another desktop with an ATI card to 10.2.6 here at the office on Monday and install LightWave and see if I can replicate the crash.

Please note, that after I do the reboot I don't reboot again, I immediately jump into Modeler and walk through the sequence and get the crash.

4 times in a row in fact.:mad:

[policarpo]

Well I sent an email with a link to this thread to the general ATI and NewTek Tech support line as well as William, Deuce and Chuck.

Has anyone been able to replicate the crash themselves yet?

[eblu]

i wish.
my ati card is a 16 meg 2x agp rage pro card (i run a sawtooth at work). the card itself is solid, but that bc its so old. Doesn't even meet the minimal requirements for LW.
I guess its interesting to note that these old cards don't have the issue tho.

[Scazzino]

I was finally able to crash modeler on my 15" PB G4 which is very similar to yours... though my crash was a little different, just crashed Modeler, not the entire system...

I only got as far as dragging out the disc and Modeler bombed...

The PB here that crashes is:
M8858LL/A
15" Titanium PowerBook G4 867MHz with 768MB RAM running Mac OS X.2.6 with the built in ATI video identified in the system profiler as a 32MB ATY,RV250M9 (ATI Mobility Radeon 9000)

This does seem to be configuration dependent though... I can't reproduce the crash on my Power Mac Dual Processor 1 GHz G4 with 64MB ATI Radeon Pro 9000. On that machine I went through all the steps and then zoomed and spun the bleep out of the "fan" in every view method and view type including perspective, no crashes there...

I've uploaded the crash log from the PB

[policarpo]

Hrmmm...well that doesn't sound good now does it. :(

I'll test it out on a couple desktops and a couple PowerBooks here at the office next week and see what happens following the same workflow I listed above.

The bug has to be 100% OpenGL related. Apple changed something in 10.2.6 and now either LightWave Modeler's OpenGL doesn't mesh properly, or the ATI driver is missing something...not sure which.

I haven't heard about this type of thing from any Cinema4DXL users using OSX...

I hope they figure this out.

note: i will try this scenario out on a build of Panther on a similarly configure PB next week as well. Wish me luck. :)

[Stewpot]

Hi Policarpo,

Just tried this on my G4 466 32Mb Radeon running OSX 10.1.5 with 1Gig ram and had no problems.

[policarpo]

You need to be runing 10.2.6 for the problem to occur.

Cheers,

[mlinde]

Originally posted by policarpo
You need to be runing 10.2.6 for the problem to occur.

Cheers,
It may also occur in 10.2.5 (but that OS release was wrong in so many ways...)

[Jimzip]

It crashed for me nearly every time I bevelled something in the perspective window with something in the background.

But I've only had it happen once in the last four months, and I was being stupid at the time, whizzing the perspective view around too much.. I deserved it... :(

Jimzip :D

[Ge4-ce]

Maybe there are some ways to make modeler crash, or I mean one thing you do that make modeler crash.. But my experirience with this OS 10..2.5 and 10.2.6 problem is highly unpredictable.. It crashes on many things, mostly when zooming or rotating view in perspective mode. but also a boolean caused a problem.

shapes or polycount did not manner as far as I know.. Multi instead of single layerd objects however DID manner.. but try and model something with only 1 layer...

Go to Mac-Expo in Paris next wednesday.. hope to get in touch with an ATI or Apple guy over there..

take my Powerbook with me and show them the problem..

If my Mac does not crash over there, I will be furious!!! :D but I'm pretty convinced that it will..

[neoklassik]

"I haven't heard about this type of thing from any Cinema4DXL users using OSX"

I did not have any problems with Cinema4d on my machine (C4d r8, Dual G4 1.25, X.2.6), but I was having major problems on LW so I switched to Nvidia.
LW is running very smooth now... of course I paid a small fortune for the privilige. Thanks ATI!
I do have one new wierd thing that popped up on Cinema.. if you load a picture in the background and move around on close-in views it freaks out a bit. But that could be something to do with 8.2 upgrade I DL'd after I switched. I'm not switching in the Radeon to find out though.

[Chuck]

Update on this issue:

ATI programming staff are indeed working on the problem. I got a response last week, and my request here for further information was fruitful and the ATI programming staff have now been able to duplicate the problem on one of their in-house systems. Now that they've duplicated the issue, they expect to be able to pin down and correct the cause. I'll post further info as I hear from them.

[policarpo]

ROCK!!!:D

Where do I need to send the pharmeceuticals I import daily from Mexico so it can get done asap. :)

Thanks Chuck for the update.